Daein Cheong
Daein Cheong is an architect (HMONP) and the founder of Studio Punctum, based in Seoul. He is currently a Lecturer at the Michael Graves College, Wenzhou-Kean University, where he teaches architectural design, representation, history and theory. His work spans architectural practice, research, and experimental visual production, with a particular focus on the role of vision, representation, and perceptual apparatuses in architectural thinking. Cheong studied architecture at ENSA Paris-Malaquais, where he completed both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, and later obtained his HMONP. Prior to founding his studio, he worked at offices including Mass Studies (Minsuk Cho) in Seoul and Mésarchitecture (Didier Faustino) in Paris.
Articles of Daein Cheong
Experiencing Programmed Magic: AI Image Generation and the Photo-Roman
This research does not aim to define artificial intelligence theoretically, nor does it seek to provide a systematic exposition of Vilém Flusser’s thought. Instead, it begins from the question of how vision has come to define space in architecture and examines, through practice, the conditions under which technical images operate within processes of AI-based image generation. Writing not as a Flusser scholar but as an architect, the author seeks to unsettle the assumptions through which visually centered conceptions of space have been naturalized via perspective, photography, and digital media. Within this context, the text takes the form of a working report that documents the experience of what Flusser described as the “programmed magic” of technical images as it emerged during the production of an eleven-minute photo-roman. The case study, a photo-roman titled Eyes of Epoché, is a fictional project inspired by philosophical thought experiments concerning perception and knowledge. By depicting a subject who has perceived the world exclusively through vision and remains unable to intuitively comprehend spatial relationships even after regaining bodily movement, the work exposes vision not as a natural or universal faculty but as a system constructed through specific conditions and forms of learning. The production process, which moved from collage-based storyboards to AI-generated images, reveals a gradual shift in authorship from the act of designing images toward the adjustment and selection of possibilities provided by a generative program. This research approaches AI-based image generation as a form of technical imagery continuous with photography, arguing that their primary difference lies not in representational outcomes but in the speed and manner through which uncertainty and failure are resolved. In doing so, it raises the question of whether the possibility of artistic play, as articulated by Flusser, can still be established in relation to this emerging apparatus.